Water: The Urgency of a Territorial Agenda

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the water supply crisis and the resulting risk of rationing in regional scale in the Brazilian Southeast (2014/15). Considering the extension, magnitude and intensity of this crisis, particularly in São Paulo metropolitan areas and throughout Paraíba do Sul river, it is argued that new spatialities are emerging and imposing adjustments to water management. According to this paper, the latter is a question of geo-institutional nature. It is not possible to understand the water supply crisis and emergency actions as exclusively related to flow control and reduction. From this understanding comes the urgency of a territorial agenda, that is, one that considers the relations between different spaces, diverse agents, and the environmental history itself in Paraíba do Sul river basin.